Mort, the 10,000 year old boy by Martin Chatterton

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Random House, 2012. ISBN 978 1 74275 315 7.
(Age: 8-12) Mort De Vere is a boy who happens to be 10,000 years old. Mort and his sister Agnetha have the family trait of aging 1 year for every 1000.
Mort and Agnetha's parents are on an extended holiday therefore the children have been unsupervised on creepy Unk Island for a few hundred years, giving them opportunity to pursue their own individual hobbies. Mort loves to clone famous people, such as Leonardo da Vinci, H G Wells and Robert Oppenheimer. They are assisting him in the construction of a time machine which happens to be on a strict launch schedule.
Enter the unflappable Ms Patricia Molyneux and her nervous assistant Nigel who have arrived at Unk Island to investigate why the children are not in school and Mort and Agnetha's world hilariously starts to fall apart.
One of my favourite cloned characters is Genghis Khan, who is no longer under Mort's control and is running wild around the island with an intent to kill that always seems to go astray. Agnetha also creates people and her Goldilocks is not something you would like to meet in a dark alley either.
Throughout the book are black and white cartoon style illustrations which add to the humour of the text.
This is an amusing story for 8 to 12 year olds, with lots of silly action and crazy characters but the fun doesn't stop with this book as the story is to be continued in a sequel.
Jane Moore

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